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Cohn: Tim Hudak’s Tory vision for a low-union, low-wage Ontario

Remember the Caterpillar catastrophe? That London factory closing marked a low point for Ontario early in the new year.

No lives were lost, just the livelihoods of 460 skilled workers when they rejected a humiliating demand to halve their wages. They were locked out, then laid off when Caterpillar relocated to a low-wage, right-to-work state.

Now, Ontario’s PC party is coming to Caterpillar’s defence — by branding the victims as the villains. Yes, blame the union — because big labour can’t see the Caterpillars marching.

That’s the forward-looking vision you’ll be hearing from Opposition Leader Tim Hudak, who has unveiled a radical anti-union agenda to help rebrand his putatively Progressive Conservative party: the end of unionism, replaced by a more “flexible” future.

Hudak eschews the loaded phrase, “right-to-work,” which evokes an aggressive, Wisconsin-style anti-union movement. But make no mistake, this is a declaration of war against organized labour by a politician firing the starter’s pistol in a race to the bottom.

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Under his new Tory roadmap, Ontario will become a province where Caterpillars crush unions. A place where workers who still benefit from collective bargaining need not pay union dues — so that membership atrophies, money dries up, and the labour movement is disemboweled.

“The recent loss of the Caterpillar locomotive plant in London was just one example of Ontario’s new reality,” Hudak’s latest policy paper declares ominously.

He relegates unions to the dustbin of history, comparing them to rotary phones and typewriters that have been overtaken by smartphones and touchpads. Best to unplug unions so as to placate Caterpillars — and please other predatory employers.

The Tory policy paper, Flexible Labour Markets, would undo the so-called Rand formula, the grand compromise that requires workers to pay union dues in a workplace where collective bargaining has raised their wages and improved conditions. Not even former Tory premier Mike Harris tried to unravel Rand.

Hudak is turning sharply right, and not by accident. He was flanked for this announcement by the most extreme right-wing member of his caucus — Randy Hillier, the zealous libertarian who once led the Ontario Landowners Association that resembles a rural Tea Party rump.

He boasts of being a former electrician, but revels in the role of Joe the Plumber. Hillier not only opposes union dues, his household didn’t pay its full tax bill until the Canada Revenue Agency came calling — a disclosure he failed to make as an MPP. Now, the politician who flouts the rules wants to rewrite them for the rest of us.

Together, Hillier and Hudak make the specious argument that Ontario’s declining manufacturing sector and rising unemployment, relative to other provinces, can be blamed on unions. Their analysis ignores the upheavals of globalization, the appreciation of the Canadian dollar, and the commodity booms that benefited other regions.

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And it conveniently overlooks the historical reality that in Ontario’s boom times, the private sector was far more heavily unionized than it is today. Competing against right-to-work states won’t prepare Ontario’s highly educated workforce for the high-tech, high-value jobs of tomorrow.

As a final sop to business, the Tories want to privatize workers’ compensation by allowing private insurers to compete with the WSIB, leaving it as an “insurer of last resort” for the most risky (and costly) enterprises. First emasculate unions, then endanger the already precarious protections for injured workers.

These labour proposals are not so much thought provoking as deliberately provocative. Hudak is scapegoating organized labour when unionization rates are down.

His attack may well strike a chord with the Hillier wing of the party. But aligning himself with that anti-union streak won’t resolve the deep-seated economic challenges facing all Ontarians.

Blaming labour for Ontario’s lagging productivity and manufacturing setbacks, while ignoring the inertia of our business brain trust, only undermines his credibility — and the Progressive Conservative legacy.

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